Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh has ordered an investigation into the capsize of an apparently overloaded boat carrying religious pilgrims that killed at least 69 people, officials said on Friday.
”The exact circumstances of this tragedy must be known,” Guelleh said in a message of condolence released to the nation after Thursday’s accident, believed to be the tiny Red Sea state’s worst-ever disaster.
”In these painful circumstances, my thoughts are with the families and close friends mourning the victims of this horrible event,” he said.
At least 69 people drowned, 20 were missing and 36 injured after the traditional wooden boat carrying more than 200 capsized as it left the main harbor of the Port of Djibouti, witnesses and officials said.
Of the 36 injured, seven were still hospitalised with serious wounds on Friday, officials said, adding that 77 people had been confirmed to have escaped without injury.
The ship was headed to the town of Tadjourah for a Muslim religious festival when it overturned about 100m) from the port, officials said, adding the cause appeared to be an ”imbalance” from too many passengers.
Witnesses said the boat — designed to transport cargo and not more than about 150 people — appeared to be carrying between 250 to 300 passengers when it capsized.
The state news agency, Agence Djiboutienne d’Information, reported that the vessel was carrying about 236 people, many of whom crowded to one side of the deck shortly before the accident.
Sailors from the navies of Djibouti and France, which maintains its largest military base in Africa in the former French colony, responded to the accident, pulling survivors and bodies from the water.
After search and rescue operations were called off late on Thursday, a French military official said the death toll would likely rise as more of the missing were recovered.
”We may find more bodies in the hull of the boat or in the sea,” he said. — Sapa-AFP